How an old-line socialist in London succeeded in using free-enterprise rhetoric to pitch and impose a "congestion charge" that turns out to be a confiscatory tax. The attempt to manage congestion and pollution via central planning is now crushing business in London, writes Toby Baxendale.
The September 11th attacks hit no industry more directly than they did the airline industry. In 2001, this industry lost 8 billion dollars. It lost 9 billion in 2002, two thirds of which supposedly derived from 9-11. The Federal government has delivered 5 billion dollars in cash and 10 billion in loan guarantees to airlines affected by 9-11. This massive infusion of money and credit has yet to satisfy the appetites of airline executives.
When assessing the costs of the war in Iraq, the full costs, including the costs on the home front, must be considered every bit as much as the money costs. Sadly, the most expensive aspects of war, especially in terms of lost liberties and cultural decline, are usually the hardest to measure, and are therefore more easily ignored.
If popularity was the sole measure of success then D.A.R.E., the "Drug Abuse Resistance Education" curriculum that is now taught in 80 percent of school districts nationwide, would be triumphant. However, if one is to gauge success by actual results, then America's most pervasive and expensive youth drug education program is (and always has been) a gigantic and incontrovertible flop.
Almost exactly ten years ago, a National Commission on Social Security Reform headed by Greenspan proposed a package of benefit cuts and tax increases, which Congress enacted with little change, and which turned out to be one of the most oppressive—and underhanded—things Congress ever did to younger Americans over Social Security. It also failed to solve Social Security's long-term problems.
What can one say about this system with its huge problems, whose defenders now say it should be granted a 33% fare (tax) increase? The fare, after a series of perfunctory public hearings that most people will not attend because they are too busy trying to earn a living to pay New York's huge tax bill, will be hiked from $1.50 to $2.
Numbers never lie. Or do they? With government, it's simply a matter of who's keeping the books. Take America's so-called war on drugs, for instance. Last year, Congress earmarked nearly $19 billion—nearly twice what it spent on military operations in Afghanistan—to enforce U.S. drug laws.
Gregory Bresiger merely wanted to check out a video that both the library catalog and a clerk said was on the shelves. Instead, he stood face to face with what seemed to be the very embodiment of the entire public sector. Whether running libraries or global economies, the public sector isn't up to the job.
How does the public sector decide that it is a good idea to explore space instead of spending the time, resources, and talent on other scientific explorations or, for that matter, some other area like building a road? Tibor Machan, for example, likes the idea of ocean living but few seem to agree with him.
